Origins Of The Gulag: The Soviet Prison Camp System, 1917-1934

A vast network of prison camps was an essential part of the Stalinist system. Conditions in the camps were brutal, life expectancy short. This study examines the most crucial period in the history of the camps: from the October Revolution of 1917, when the tsarist prison system was destroyed, to October 1934, when all places of confinement were consolidated under one agency - the infamous GULAG.